The Last Battle and the Last of the Chronicles of Narnia

Finished The Last Battle and The Chronicles of Narnia. Wonderful, as everybody else in the whole world seems to know already.

The Calormene and Ape effort to erode the uniqueness of Aslan is intriguing:

Tash is only another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan are only different names for you know Who." p 38

I am reminded of today's universalist efforts to make all religions equally true saying that we all believe in the same God. Later the Cat wants to "clarify" things with Calormene Rishda Tarkaan about this. He says:

"I just wanted to know exactly what we both meant today about Aslan meaning no more than Tash." "Doubtless, most sagacious of cats,' says the other [Rishda], "you have perceived my meaning." "You mean," says Ginger, "that there's no such person as either." "All who are enlightened know that," said the Tarkaan. p89-90

Which is exactly where such universalist relativism ends up, in my opinion. There are even some Anglican bishops and clergy who teach something perilously close to that. Lewis is very perceptive.

I was also fascinated by the door that you can walk all the way around and which goes nowhere, unless you open it and walk through (p160). Isn't that the thing about Jesus? We can walk all around him, describe him, analyze him, admire him, but unless we actually open the door he represents and unlocked for us, we go nowhere.

And then the final paragraph:

the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." p210-211

Things that make the harps come.

Reading the Chronicles makes me glad that Jesus is good, but not tame. It makes me look forward even more to meeting Jesus himself face to face one day.

The Silver Chair

Finished The Silver Chair. Delightful. I like the bit where the Witch, Lady of the Green Kirtle, Queen of the Underland, tries with her magic to convince Jill, Eustace, Prince Rilian and Puddleglum that there are no such things as an Overland, Narnia, the sky, the sun or Aslan. To which Puddleglum responds:

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies making a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. 

Me, too. The Mountain of Aslan sounds pretty good to me.

If people like the Queen of the Underland and Richard Dawkins are right, when we die—nothing, oblivion—and I could have lived to please myself, instead I "wasted" some me time worshipping God and blessing a few other people. If they are wrong? Heaven or hell. We're all betting our lives on which belief system is true.

That Golden Goodness: Reading The Chronicles of Narnia

Imagine not getting around to reading The Chronicles of Narnia until you're sixty three! That would be me. A summer holiday project which has turned out to be a delight. I find Lewis very English, whimsical and funny. The language and the humour resonates with the BBC radio comedy shows with which I grew up. For example, on Digory's Uncle Andrew and Aunt Letty's house in The Magician's Nephew:

It was one of those houses that get very quiet and dull in the afternoon and always seem to smell of mutton. (Scholastic, 1955), p91

Mutton.

That Golden Goodness: thoughts about Aslan and Jesus

I find the sense of Jesus in Aslan very moving. Also in The Magician's Nephew:

Both the children were looking up into the Lion's face as he spoke these words. And all at once (they never knew exactly how it happened) the face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even alive and awake." p194

"That golden goodness" (p194) must be what the presence of Jesus is like. There is another wonderful sense of that in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump on its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some beautiful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realise that it is the beginning of summer. (Scholastic, 1950), p68 

I, too, felt something jump inside as I read of him (and as Aslan roared in the movie). I can understand exactly why Peter wanted to build something to preserve the "golden goodness" of the Transfiguration. We all want to preserve such experiences; to keep Jesus handy in case we need him; but, as Lewis so perceptively writes, also in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

He'll be coming and going,…one day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down—and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a TAME lion. p182

Jesus: Good but not Safe

We domesticate the wildness out of Jesus at our peril, methinks. The Anglican politically correct movement wants him meek and mild; tame. Lewis is right about King Jesus when he writes of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

…he isn't safe, but he's good. p80

Finding the Wardrobe Again: Getting Back to Narnia

Not only that, there's a temptation in ministry to try and find "secret," the "key," the "method" which will cause everything to click into place for things to take off. So we read how others seem to have done it and we are tempted to try and reproduce whatever it is. It's like we're all trying to find that wardrobe portal so we can get back to Narnia. But, again in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't TRY to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it. p188

Rather like my golf game. When I've hit a good shot, I don't know what I did and I can't repeat it at will. I just have to relax and keep swinging and every now and then it happens.

Screwtape on Getting on with Brothers and Sisters who Think, Believe and Behave Differently

Vintage St Clive (CS Lewis, that is)! I've always loved this quote but lost it for a while. Found it in one of my notebooks last Sunday.

And all the purely indifferent things—candles and clothes and what not—are admirable ground for our activities. We have quite removed from men's minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials—namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples. You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the "low" churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his "high" brother should be moved to irreverence, and the "high" one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his "low" brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that, the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility. 

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape.  

The Screwtape Letters, XVI, p75 

Only genuflecting and crossing one's self are no longer the problem. I am reminded of the great divide between mainline and evangelical churches. Just a few weeks ago at a General Synod reception in Halifax, a Bishop told me Prime Minister Harper is a fundamentalist who, therefore, had no time for Anglicans.

???!!!???

On CS Lewis and a Certain Lust of the Flesh

H/T CLAN MCKINNON (a blogplace of joy and smiling faces): here.

I much prefer to commit it with bacon.

Mud Pies and Holidays By the Sea: Vintage CS Lewis

Vintage St Clive from today's Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that it's a bad thing to desire one's good and earnestly hope for enjoyment, it is because it has crept in from the teachings of Immanuel Kant and the ancient Stoics. Certainly, it has no part in the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy has been offered to us. We are far too easily pleased, like an ignorant child who goes on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: MacMillan, 1980), p136 (I think)

Am I missing any holidays by the sea? I wonder if Jesus can use the mud from my pies to heal my blindness, too.

From Two Giants: Nouwen and Lewis

This is today's meditation from Henri Nouwen:

Jesus Is Persecuted

Jesus, the favorite Child of God, is persecuted. He who is poor, gentle, mourning; he who hungers and thirsts for uprightness; is merciful, pure of heart and a peacemaker is not welcome in this world. The Blessed One of God is a threat to the established order and a source of constant irritation to those who consider themselves the rulers of this world. Without his accusing anyone he is considered an accuser, without his condemning anyone he makes people feel guilty and ashamed, without his judging anyone those who see him feel judged. In their eyes, he cannot be tolerated and needs to be destroyed, because letting him be seems like a confession of guilt.

When we want to become like Jesus, we cannot expect always to be liked and admired. We have to be prepared to be rejected.

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And some vintage St Clive for today from The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings, (Fount, 1984), ed. Walter Hooper, quoting The Great Divorce, chapter 8:

Two Kinds of People in the End

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done', and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

There is very definitely an edge to this Christianity business. There are choices to made moment by moment, there is mercy, there is judgement, there is Hell, there is Heaven and, above all, there is Jesus.

Giddyup!

Jude and I are reading and very much enjoying CS Lewis (St Clive), The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings, ed. Walter Hooper, (Fount, 1984)...a treasure.

Tomorrow's reading (we read it early because we don't have time on Sunday mornings) is from his Miracles, chapter 16. It includes this:

These small perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bareback, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King's stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else - since He has retained His own charger - should we accompany Him?

How else, indeed.

My son, Anthony, wrote a song called Ride With You after the death of a friend. St Clive's "winged, shining and world-shaking horses" remind me of it. This is the chorus:

I wanna ride with You
On Your white horse with Your sword in hand
With Blazing eyes of fire
Lord, Son of Man, and Son of God
I wanna ride with You, Lord

(Complete lyrics. Listen to the song. )

My name is Gene and I'm a triumphalist. Jesus is my King. Giddyup!

My Job Description

An interesting clarification of my job description from CS Lewis', Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 3:

The clergy are those particular people within the whole Church who have been specially trained and set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to live for ever.